The entire staff of Edcon has been issued with retrenchment notices after the company failed to receive binding offers to buy it, or any of its divisions, over. The retail giant has been looking for buyers, and its employees had hoped they would simply be transferred to new owners of the business. The company has approximately 17 000 full-time employees, and roughly 5 000 seasonal workers.

Edcon’s retrenchments are to be be the biggest yet.

One of the groups business rescue practitioners, Lance Schapiro, said that in the event of a binding offer being received and implemented, the number of people at risk of being retrenched would be lower, as some employees would be transferred to the new owners. He said the plan was to try to sell the entire business, though, so as to minimize the number of job losses.

TimesLive reports that the 90 year old company blames load-shedding and the initial 45-day hard lockdown, which prohibited the sale of non essential products, for its collapse.

Meanwhile, the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union secretariat co-ordinator, Lucas Ramatlhodi said that it was premature to have put Edcon in business rescue. He said that Edcon had recently received a cash injection in the form of a bailout, and that SACCAWU had not received any feedback regarding if that had helped in turning the company around. Ramatlhodi added that their concerns have been raised with the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel.

Schapiro, however, said that the business rescue plan was still in its preliminary phase.

Umm Muhammed Umar